Flow: loss of self-awareness, better performance

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Don't you love it when you are totally immersed in what you do, go for the challenge and everything you do just succeeds and you pull out a super performance? That might have been an experience in flow!

As Csikszentmihalyi sees it, components of an experience of flow can be specifically enumerated; he presents the following:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time - one's subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. When in the flow state, people become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging

(Csikszentmihalyi, 1975. p.72).
Not all are needed for flow to be experienced.

Do you recognize some points in some great successfull moments you have had? What kind of moments those were?

Psychology today.com
Wikipedia: Flow

 

[Kyrielle]

This sounds like a sojourn into the state of Being or maybe wu wei...to me anyway.

Yea, I experience this everyday. I couldn't describe the moments or times when it's occurred, because I don't put much thought into remembering those moments. While they're precious, they don't need to be documented.

 

[Athenian200]

I often feel this way while I'm comfortable in a conversation with someone, one-on-one. The other time is when I'm doing something on the computer. What about you?

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

This sounds like a sojourn into the state of Being or maybe wu wei...to me anyway.

Yea, I experience this everyday. I couldn't describe the moments or times when it's occurred, because I don't put much thought into remembering those moments. While they're precious, they don't need to be documented.

Oh yeah, when I feel it, those are the moments when I could absolutely not be less interested in documenting or analyzing. The thought doesn't even occur.

This is one thing that I will never want to analyze to death.

By best chance to flow is to pick a novel, productive challenge, such that it requires me to pull every trick from my sleeve to get it done It's super exciting to see the "impossible" become real. Of course it was never impossible in the first place, but just really hard in many ways.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

I often feel this way while I'm comfortable in a conversation with someone, one-on-one. The other time is when I'm doing something on the computer. What about you?

Sometimes in the middle of an exciting party with wild and funny mood, sometimes when doing totally new things for work and learning as I go! Also when I get the inspiration to do all the accumulated chores and neglected tasks in a short burst of work.

 

[Zergling]

I thought this would be a fluid mechanics thread at first.

Do you recognize some points in some great successfull moments you have had? What kind of moments those were?

Usually this occurs in computer games, when solving some sort of problem (math or science), when writing a paper, or when making up some sort of computer game idea. Usually what happens is that I reach a point where things click into place, and I start coming up with a lot of ideas quickly, speeding up the rate that I do whatever it was I was doing, and letting me finish it up quickly.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Isn't this what people basically mean when they say they are "in the zone"?

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Isn't this what people basically mean when they say they are "in the zone"?

I've only read from Wikipedia that some people call it that. I dont speak english actively and I haven't heard that term used, so I wouldn't know.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

I've only read from Wikipedia that some people call it that. I dont speak english actively and I haven't heard that term used, so I wouldn't know.

"In the zone" might just be an American phrase. It's used a lot in sports contexts, but it can be used in other contexts as well.


EDIT: One interesting experience I've had with being "in the zone" involved a game of Ping Pong. I was playing against someone whose skill was fairly close to mine or perhaps a little better. At one point I got enraptured into our conversation to the point that I forgot what was going on around me. After a while I stopped and asked the score because I totally was not paying attention. He replied, "Are you kidding? You scored the last 14 points in a row."

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

I thought this would be a fluid mechanics thread at first.
.

lol
Edited the title